The Professional Development and Technology Institute (INTEF) is the National Agency for Educational Technology and Teacher Development funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. The personnel hired is about 120 people ranging from educational experts to administrative staff and interns.

The policies are inspired by the European Council and the European Commission guidelines. The mission is to provide primary and secondary schools teachers with innovative resources and training opportunities to improve their competencies and acquire good practice skills, strategies and knowledge in all fields of education. Digital competence and internet open access courses (MOOC) resources (OAR) are within the main goals of the PD plans we run.

The educational programs led by INTEF include summer face-to-face courses for teacher professional development, teacher mobility programs with European countries, seminars, conferences and joint educational projects. Along with face-to-face programs, an extensive catalogue of online courses for teachers in all disciplines and levels are offered by INTEF.
Many of them include specific actions addressed to strengthen the skills of teachers through additional training in STEM, foreign languages competence, digital competence and so forth.

Furthermore, we organize conferences and congresses to support teachers in their endeavour to evolve the way in which they teach.
The engagement of the Spanish Ministry of Education through INTEF plays a crucial role in providing institutional support for the wide uptake of our 21th century education model, as well as for facilitating the use of key teacher training networks, enhancing communication and dissemination.
INTEF reaches around 10,000 teachers through professional development courses and approximately 200,000 people through our webpages and social network.

All PD courses, resources and projects usually develop tools and strategies to meet learning requirements in a multi-layered classroom: students from disadvantaged backgrounds, cultural diversity, special needs and multiple intelligences considerations are always taken into account.
Our staff is highly qualified in all areas of professional development and school levels, ranging from STEM, Arts, Foreign Languages, Diversity and Special Needs, etc.
Our focus is to provide quality and updated PD across all levels of education and throughout all autonomous regions in Spain. INTEF PD programs promote innovation and ICT to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that education scenarios are experiencing. We believe that schools and teaching professionals should undertake a thorough transformation. This will lead to remarkable changes in education goals and approaches in the next future.
By improving and reformulating education we will manage to develop social justice and inclusiveness, cooperation; cultural diversity awareness and appreciation; critical thinking and active citizenship; smart and sustainable economy growth; equal access to opportunities and welfare; a shared vision of human values and ethics and all kind of benefits that an empowered global citizenship can yield.

As the Spanish National Agency for Educational Technology and Teacher Professional Development, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, INTEF is responsible for the production and management of a wide range of free access products and services for teachers. These include self-learning resources for teachers, on-line teacher communication platforms and repositories of classroom materials, and authoring tools with which teachers and academics are assisted in the production of web interactive content and open access online publications. INTEF has developed and taken part in different projects and initiatives, all of which have contributed significantly to supporting teacher professional development and digital education in STEM at both national and international level, internet tools, resources and infrastructures for schools.

We run dissemination events related to our programs: meetings, conferences, seminars and so forth. We plan the events from the beginning (budget needs, project management, agenda, invitations, presentations, travel arrangements and assessment). We regularly participate in dissemination events with and exhibitor and presentations or panels.

Regarding PD assessment, we plan online surveys for attendants and analyse the results using statistical tools and quality criteria.
We keep close relationship with all PD government agencies and institutions at a national and international level. We organize PD summer courses in partnership with “Universidad Internacional Menendez Pelayo” in different locations throughout the country. We plan budget, design contents, recruit professors and providers, make necessary arrangements regarding facilities and ITC, supervise enrolment and attendance, issue attendance certificates and so forth.

Mar is the Head of the Department for Teacher Professional Development at the National Institute of Technology and Professional Development (INTEF) at the Ministry for Education, Culture and Sport (MECD) and therefore has full responsibility of in-service, face-to-face teacher professional development. Among her duties, she is in charge of identification of professional development needs among teachers, the identification of persons capable of running professional development for certain topics, as well as the setting up of professional development plans / offers.

She has extensive experience as a STEM university researcher and as a STEM consultant at the Department of Education in Madrid.
Her background as a Maths and Science teacher gives her unique insight into teachers’ needs and the context where they work.
She is well-connected within the ministry of education to e.g. the Department of European projects, the ministry and the state secretary, as well as to many other departments, which will ensure the wide dissemination within our Ministry.
Mar believes that the connection between STEM, fundamental values and intercultural learning has a major role in future education and is fully committed to this objective.

Mar has been representative of the Spanish Ministry of Education in previous STEM European projects, i.e. the Thematic Working Group on Mathematics, Science and Technology Addressing Low Achievement in Mathematics and Science. (2010 – 2013), European Advisory Board member in Mascil and CLIMACT projects and member of the National Advisory Board in INQUIRE project.

Rubén Durán
Advisor at the Department for Teacher TrainingInstituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y de Formación del Profesorado (INTEF)
Rubén works actively at the Department lead by Mar Jiménez, dealing with training plans of the Ministry, educational technologies and European projects.
Given his background as a Math teacher in Secondary education, his abilities are not limited to management. In that respect, he is used to deal with classroom issues and themes that are more practical.

Rubén has also experience as advisor at the Spanish National Agency for Erasmus+, where he was in charge of the Key Action 1 at the Higher Education Unit.
He consider STEM education and European projects very interesting for the society and he believes that a connection between both can contribute to enhance the quality of education along the country.